Easy, Engaging Advent Calendars for Kids

I'm pretty sure as a kid, I didn't understand what Advent calendars were. Not a particularly religious family, my sisters and I loved Christmas but perhaps didn't entrench ourselves in the religious symbolism behind the holiday. Sure, we knew Christmas marked the birth of Christ. The Little Drummer Boy and other holiday TV fare taught us that much. I remember my first awareness of the Advent calendar being a slight sense of jealousy over the kids who talked about their calendars and the candy behind those Advent calendar doors in the four weeks leading up to Christmas. I ran into another dealer, Susan, at Twin Elm Farm the other day who was hanging paper chains in her booth. As well as being an interior designer and antiques dealer at Twin Elm, she's also a retired child developmentalist. About 25 years ago, Susan noticed her daughter struggling with the concept of the Advent calendar. "Before the age of about six or seven (although the age varies widely!), children don't know the difference between numbers like 17 and 23. As ideas, they are too abstract! When they open an Advent calendar door that says "17", they still have NO idea when Christmas is! To try to explain what the door marked "17" means involves another mystifying idea: subtraction! Christmas is Day 25 minus Day 17, so it will happen in 8 days. For young minds, that's a lot to ask! Children can count the unopened doors, if they can find them all, but that's a tricky task for a 5-year-old. And what about children who don't yet know their numbers at all? Kind of cruel, don't you think?" Susan created something much more concrete for young children to grasp the concept of the passage of time… an Advent calendar made up of a colorful paper chain. A "Christmas Chain." The idea is for the child to build it themselves, with assistance, from either a kit or printed out from an online file. Each link of the chain is very colorful and contains a number from 1 to 24. When first constructed, the chain is very long and is attached to a paper Christmas tree. On December 1, they take off one link; on December 2 another and so on. Taking a link off every day allows the child to see how it's getting closer to Christmas! Susan's daughter loved the chain. As did her nephews. It was a hit throughout her family. '"We had Christmas Chain. I took a link off it every night at dinner. It was really important. I didn't let my little sister and baby brother do it. It was my Christmas job." reported a young man, now a defensive linebacker.' Just like Puff the Magic Dragon, once the children all grew older, the chain was forgotten. Susan recently found her original copy of the chain on an old hard drive, so she had an idea. She created a bunch of Christmas Chain kits and now offers them for sale in her antiques booth at Twin Elm. I admired the vivid colors and designs of each link creation. Susan also added that another fun thing to do is to write whimsical little fortunes on the chain links after they're cut out and before linking to the chain. 'It's a fun chance to think about good things that could happen in the future, like "A butterfly will land on your nose" or "You will travel to a foreign land." If the links get mixed up before the fortunes are written, when the chain is made the fortunes are random. Who knows who will get what? The fun gets another layer." Paper chains were some of the earliest decorations for Christmas trees and I remember creating them in grade school and at home with my sisters. We used multi-colored construction paper and tape. Susan has certainly upped the concept to a fun holiday project a young child can claim ownership of. Even the littlest ones like to have a "job" of their own at Christmas.